Coaches Corner

The Apex, or any MRT workouts, will provide the most efficient and effective workouts in our programs. When you perform MRT workouts, you are combining the best of both worlds: Resistance + High-Intensity Interval Training sessions. Both forms help you burn calories during AND after your exercise session, so combining yields a route to quick and lasting results.

One of the main goals from our nutrition plan is to help provide adequately spaced meals, allowing our insulin to naturally rise and fall throughout the day. The less-frequent meals can be quite large for some people, helping accomplish this goal. However, when meal time comes around and you are not hungry, you certainly don’t have to eat!

To determine if it is appropriate to skip a meal, please ensure you meet the following requirements:

• You aren’t crashing and binge eating later on
• You have ample energy and are feeling good
• You are sleeping well
• Your exercise routines are strong and results are coming in

If these requirements are not met, it may be more appropriate to consume your scheduled meal (or a smaller healthy snack).

This is absolutely normal and very common with our members! We always want to be making incremental progress so the best way to stay on track, while also progressing, is to try the following:

Do as many push-ups/rows as you can from your feet, moving to your knees to finish the remainder each round. So, if on round 5 you can do 3 "feet" push-ups/rows, do the other 2 from your knees. Gradually over time, your "feet" number will increase as your knee number goes down!

If looking to lose weight or body-fat AND you have a flexible schedule, exercising fasted in the morning (but after loads of hydration, of course) will be your best course of action. And if you are delaying your breakfast and can do your routine right before having your first meal, that is even more ideal since you have the potential to burn the most fat, while also enjoying an extremely effective concept called Nutrition Partitioning (absorbing the nutrients from your food). If looking for additional morning reasons, please see below:

• As mentioned before, if doing it fasted, you can enjoy a tremendous fat-burning boost. Not only are you using more stored body-fat as fuel for your workouts, you are capitalizing on the fact that your fat-burning hormones are highest of the day during the morning hours, making you a fat-burning machine.
• You can enjoy a metabolic and thermogenic boost that can last you throughout your day (which can be blunted when exercising in the evening when you go to sleep). Also, if exercising in the evening, it may be more difficult to fall asleep after getting your heart-rate going beforehand.
• And most importantly, you check-off the routine, ensuring no other obstacles can pop up later in the day to prevent you from completing it.

However, if exercising later in the day works better for you and your schedule, and it allows you to complete the routine fully, consistently, and with great intent, that is much more important than any of the factors listed above.

The ideal situation is to work out right before you break your fast at 10 or 1030am. Then you can burn the most amount of fat possible, absorb your meal the most efficiently, and only have 1 meal. However, for those who exercise earlier and can't/don't eat for a few hours until their designated meal time, here are the options:

• Continue to fast until your breakfast time.
  • Pros: Burn even more along the way due to recent workout.
  • Cons: Will probably be very hungry and can burn through precious lean tissue.
• Have your first meal of the day after your workout.
  • Pros: You will preserve your lean tissue and ward off hunger. You can continue the rest of the day with your meals spaced out appropriately.
  • Cons: You end your fast and blunt your fat burning.
• Have a protein shake after the workout (protein, water, and creatine if using), holding off your Breakfast Shake/meal until your designated time. This is probably the most ideal situation for most people.
  • Pros: You preserve your lean tissue once again.
  • Cons: You technically end the fast but at least protein doesn’t cause as big of an insulin spike (which we are trying to suppress in the mornings with fasting) as consuming carbs.

Fruit can absolutely be weaved into our daily meals as they help provide a wide range of vitamins, phytonutrients, antioxidants, and belly-filling fiber. True, fruit does come with some sugar and there is nothing in fruit that you can’t find in vegetables (all without the sugar). However, if emphasizing the right kinds, fruit can most definitely play a part in a healthy lifestyle. We would recommend selecting those that produce a lesser blood-sugar spike and/or those that provide the most bang for your buck. Some of our favorites include: Organic Berries, Organic Apples, less-ripe Bananas, Kiwi, and Grapefruit.

Our best advice would be to ensure you have gotten everything you can out of your current program. True, switching-up routines is essential for continued development (because our bodies adapt extremely well to a physical stimulus over time) but if you feel there is still some "meat left on the bone" from the current routine and you are still improving, it may be wise to stick with it a little while longer.

Nothing is set in stone so the bottom line is if you find there's still room for improvement, stick with the current routine! Conversely, if you find yourself no longer improving and/or your results have hit a plateau, it may be time to move on.

There are many ebbs and flows to this journey and sometimes our bodies become stagnant (or can even GAIN in the early stages) on the program but this is perfectly natural and only temporary. This can be for several reasons but please understand that if you stay dedicated, make healthy choices, and are consistent with your activity, progress will most certainly continue.

Often times when starting a new lifestyle change, our bodies go into a retentive state. When training with a new physical stimulus, you cause micro-tears in your muscles (don't worry, they grow back bigger/stronger) but to repair the tears, your body retains fluids around the muscles to help them heal. As your muscles become more efficient, there will be less retention and the pounds (as well as new pounds!) will disappear. Plus, as long as you are seeing NSVs (Non-Scale Victories) such as more energy, sleeping better, looser clothes...you know you're on the right path.

There will be lots of ups and downs throughout this journey but as long as you are trending down over time, you will see great results.

Unfortunately, we do not have the ability to spot-reduce fat on our bodies. It is a common misconception that doing core work will shrink the belly-fat. Essentially, you are simply working the abdominal muscles that lie underneath the fat, doing very little to help remove the fat.

The good news is that we can remove body-fat from all over our bodies proportionally though! We can do this through a clean dietary intake, proper hydration, daily movement, and deliberate activity. Doing core work is still important as our core is the foundation to physical movement but if looking to shed the body-fat, creating a healthy lifestyle is your best solution.